Cover Story: Hitting a Moving Target

In the end, Shatzkin says, successful strategizing is rooted in publishers doing what they have always known how to do best, but in new contexts.

"A big publisher has the relationships and infrastructure to put a book on every shelf where a consumer might see it. That's what makes them powerful publishers, 
and it's the same [with digital]," he says. "There will be many devices. The devices will all have their own retailing apparatus. The discovery is taking place in a lot of places … Facebook, Twitter, Google—and a publisher's job is to optimize all those channels. That's their job."